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Cultivating a Global Mindset

Every employee should participate in the increasing globalization of a company. Cultivating a global mindset in a company’s employees always adds to the value of a company[.]

In today’s technology-networked environment, nothing — other than the lack of a global mindset — prevents even assembly-line workers from developing their own global learning communities. In the absence of a global mindset, creating a global learning organization will almost certainly be a much tougher challenge.

In thinking about how to cultivate a global mindset, it is critical to remember that the key word is cultivation, and that the quest for a global mindset is a ceaseless journey. Living as we do in a complex and dynamic world, there is no upper limit to the extent to which one could continue to explore the world’s diversity as well as the linkages across this diversity.

The economic landscape of the world is changing rapidly and becoming increasingly global. For virtually every medium-sized to large company in developed as well as developing economies, market opportunities, critical resources, cutting-edge ideas and competitors lurk not just around the corner in the home market—but increasingly in distant and often little-understood regions of the world as well.

Individuals differ in how they sense and interpret the world around them. So do organizations. And these differences matter. They matter because it is how we perceive our environment as well as ourselves that determines which of the multitude of opportunities and problems we go after and how we do so.

We would define a global mindset as one that combines an openness to and awareness of diversity across cultures and markets with a propensity and ability to synthesize across this diversity.